I Got You
by starcrosslane
Summary: For the small things (like shared lunches and homework tutoring) to the big stuff (like protecting your bff's secret identity)—it's always the same line for Peter and Ned: "I got you."


It starts on the second day of kindergarten with a lunchbox forgotten on the Leeds' apartment counter and a peanut butter sandwich halved from Peter's. There's a smear of strawberry jelly on Ned's chin when he grins a 'thank you' muffled by a hearty bite of sandwich, but Peter smiles back, faintly giddy with the notion of finding a friend already. He's lived in Queens for all of four months, and the world still feels unsettled, topsy-turvy with the million shifts and adjustments that came with the all the things he's lost and gained since coming to Ben and May. He tries not to think about the losses when he can avoid them, instead focusing on the gains. His first days at school, all the time he gets to spend with his aunt and uncle, and now, his friend.

"S'okay," Peter says in response, settling on the phrase tossed around by Ben and May with all the little things they do to get him through the day when things are hard or the memories press close or even just because. It's a good phrase, good for lots of different things, but Peter suspects it's particularly good for best friends. "I got you!"

They both cry when Ned tumbles off the top of the slide rather than the bottom in second grade, his ankle crumpling like an accordian when he lands: Ned from the obvious pain and Peter from the sympathetic panic. Peter holds Ned's hand while they huddle on the ground with the playground monitor to wait for the paramedics, murmuring the same words Ben used to comfort him when he snapped his wrist falling off the bookshelf he'd tried to climb the summer before.

"I got you—it'll be okay, I've got you!" His voice cracks a little because nothing can really feel okay when his best friend is crying, even if Peter logically knows that it will be once Ned sees a doctor and gets his cast and lets everyone doodle on it when he comes back to school. He tells him so while they wait, sniffling through the description of what he's going to draw since he clearly has first dibs on cast-signing rights. The vivid rundown of the combination Jedi/Iron Man portrait doesn't get the smile Peter knows it would on any other day, but it gets them through until the paramedics pry them apart to load Ned up for transport. Peter counts that as good enough, since it seemed to keep Ned's mind a little less focused on the pain than it would have been otherwise. He'd dream up a million more distractions if it meant not seeing Ned cry anymore. _I've_ _got you_, he mouths as he waves at the closed ambulance doors.

"You didn't have to do that," Peter murmurs as he lets Ned guide him through the halls to the school nurse's office, an arm linked through Peter's to make up for the blurry vision left behind from his shattered glasses.

There was no way to _prove_ that Flash had tripped him on purpose, sending him to the floor glasses-first in a truly spectacular fall, but Ned had hollered at him for it anyway. It was a moment that would probably be burned into Peter's memory for eternity since, for the most part, Ned doesn't yell. That isn't his nature any more than it is Peter's, but he scoffs, as if the very idea that he wouldn't stick up for Peter is too silly for words.

"Don't worry about it." Ned bumps Peter's shoulder with his own, a quiet promise of solidarity regardless of who he has to yell at or how scary yelling at anyone actually is. "I got you."

"—and then if you just use a base 10, it all falls into place from there!" Peter finishes sketching out the explanatory diagram in the margins of Ned's notes and settles back to lean on his hands while Ned scans the completed problem with thoughtful eyes. They've spent a lot of time sitting cross-legged on the floor of Peter's room lately, algebra textbooks and notes and study guides fanned out around them like a second carpet. Peter doesn't mind. Put a keyboard in his hands and Ned can program circles around him, but Peter always pulls ahead when it comes to math. It works well—nine times out of ten, if one of them lags in a subject, the other can tutor them through. Not that either one of them does a lot of lagging on the fast track toward Midtown S&T scholarships for their impending high school years, but it does happen from time to time.

"Dude. You should be a math teacher when we grow up. It makes way more sense when you say it." Ned brings a hand up for the handshake they've been experimenting with and Peter follows, a clumsy half-second out of sync, but still close enough. "You're a lifesaver."

"No worries, man—I got you."

"Hey, you like Thai, right? We're getting take-out for dinner—you should just stay over so we can keep working," Peter says without looking up from where he's sorting spare Lego blocks by size and color-coding by function. Ned stills in sketching out the forward nacelles of the Enterprise model they've been brainstorming, homemade and reverse-engineered from a few hours squinting at fansite blueprints since the real thing is too pricey for even their combined lifesavings. It's a big project that quickly gobbles up all the time they don't have to commit to homework, but Ned's been glad of it. With one sister stressing so hard over college applications that so much as a sneeze her direction is liable to set her off and the other rebelling against the tension by throwing every tantrum in her elementary school bag of tricks, the walls of Ned's apartment feel more stifling by the day. There's no space for him to breathe there, not like there is here in the Parker apartment, where the only noise is the clatter of Ben washing lunch dishes in the sink and May humming softly from the spot by the window where she does the checkbook. If it wouldn't be rude, he'd stay forever, let alone for dinner.

"Are you sure? Will Ben and May mind?" It would be the third time this week if he bunked over again. It was easier now that Peter's old twin bed had been swapped out for a set of bunks, a move both Peter and Ned had squealed over for a week when Ben and May first worked it out.

"Nah." Peter shook his head and flashed a knowing smile. "We've got you."

Ned doesn't know what to say when he sits on the edge of the bottom bunk in Peter's room, his knee knocking against Peter's as his best friend sobs his guts out on Ned's shoulder. He isn't really sure there's anything _to_ say at a time like this, with the world knocked so far off its axis that nothing makes sense. And if he feels a little dizzy and sick at the idea of a world without Ben Parker living in it, he can't even comprehend what Peter feels like. Peter's grip is so tight it hurts where he clings to Ned's arm as if terrified that he's going to vanish, too, but Ned does his best to match the embrace squeeze for squeeze. He's sniffling, too (sympathetic crier that he is), as they rock back and forth together, murmuring the only thing that comes to mind.

"I've got you, I've got you..."

And maybe it doesn't count for much, coming from another kid who can't anything more about a murdered uncle than Peter can. But it feels right. And while there isn't much Ned can do to fix what's been taken, he can make sure Peter doesn't lack for comfort among the family he has left.

Of all the things Peter imagines for the night of his first Homecoming Dance, slumping against Ned's headboard with a bag of frozen peas held to a black eye was not among them. Nothing goes to plan that night, but at least he's alive, Toomes is webbed to a beach, and May is still blissfully unaware of how he spends his nights. He'd worried over that at first, panicking over how he's going to explain his battered face and scorched hands to an aunt who's expecting him to come home tired from dancing rather than from brawling with a birdman. Ned's family, on the other hand, doesn't bat an eye when Ned hollers out into the hallway that Peter is staying the night (although he neglects to mention that he crawled through the window to do it). Peter kicks his singed sweatsuit under the bed and curls up in borrowed PJs while Ned frowns over first aid videos he's pulled up on YouTube and reads off diagnostic questions pulled directly from WebMD. Peter mumbles through half a dozen answers about pain scales and whether his burns are more aching or throbbing before his eyelids start to flutter, heavy in dim blue light cast by Ned's laptop screen. It's easy to relax here, tucked far away from all the drama and the danger of the past few weeks, but he tries not to pass out anyway. Seems rude when he's occupying the only bed, and Ned is still crouching on the floor fretting over the first aid kit he smuggled out of the bathroom down the hall.

By the time Ned has slathered his hands in triple antibiotic and started winding them in gauze, Peter knows he's going to lose that fight regardless. He manages a tired smile first, though.

"Thanks, man. Y're the best."

"Anytime. That's what the Guy in the Chair is for!" Ned grins back as he fumbles with a roll of medical tape that seems to be taping Ned's fingers together more than Peter's bandages. "I got you. Always."

Ned's fairly certain that hero people aren't supposed to scream when the world's exploding around them, but he's also very certain that he doesn't care. He yells when the guy with the tangle of mechanical arms descends on the high rise—the main campus for some tech conglomerate, if he remembers the sign correctly—next to the coffee shop he and Peter and MJ study at every Thursday afternoon, he yells when he and MJ scramble under the patio table to avoid the spray of broken glass, and he yells when a mild explosion from the floor the octopus-man vanished into rocks the street.

After all, Ned is only tangentially connected to hero people. Being the Guy in the Chair was supposed to mean that he stayed out of the line of fire. But he supposes that also being a New Yorker does sort of cancel out that particular perk of the job. It isn't a safe city when it comes to alien invasions and criminals with dumb costumes and weird gimmicks.

There's a flash of red and blue at the fringe of Ned's vision, sprinting through the maze of overturned tables and fleeing passersby from wherever Peter had disappeared to to change. Spider-Man pauses at the table Ned and MJ have chosen to crouch beneath.

"Don't worry, ah...citizens—" Ned stifles a snicker. It isn't funny, not really, not at a time like this, but that doesn't change the way Peter's attempt at a deep voice whilst saying things like "citizens" stirs up the giggles in the back of his throat. Sooner or later, they're just going to have to tell MJ. He sneaks a glance over at her and amends that thought at the sight of the shrewd furrow of her brow. They're going to have to tell her _soon_ or she's going to get to that conclusion herself. Not, Ned supposes, that that would be a bad thing, given the way Peter's been mooning over her. Not to mention how much easier it would make Ned's life in general since it would remove the need for the steady stream of stupid excuses he's been making up for whenever Peter vanishes into his spider-shenanigans. "—I've got you. Just stay put!"

With that, Peter is gone, flinging himself up the side of the building to plunge into whatever fight is waiting for him. Ned heaves a sigh as he watches him disappear into the smoke. Seeing his best friend out superheroing never fails to be the coolest thing he's ever seen...but it remains the scariest thing, too. Still, that doesn't change anything. Peter's got Ned's back, in costume or out of it. And Ned's got his right back.

_**AN: Thanks so much for reading! Reviews are always appreciated, so feel free to drop me a line if there was anything in particular you enjoyed!**_


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